Perth, September 1997

Arriving at Perth airport I hadn't bothered to book anywhere to stay, which led to some pointed questions from Immigration. However, I knew that there was a board with various accommodation listed on it and a free telephone to use. I picked one of the backpackers that said it had single rooms, but on the telephone the guy explained that the rooms were only really partitioned. After over 20 hours on the plane, I was beyond caring, so I ended up booking myself in for a couple of nights.

If you think about the sort of noise that two hippos would probably make having sex . Amplify it. Then imagine it lasting for about 8 hours, you might just about capture what one of the guys in my room sounded like when he snored. It didn't help that the jet lag meant that I woke up at around 3am and ended up lying there trying not to listen.

After the two nights of this I decided it would be much more fun to stay at the YMCA. So I checked into Jewell House, and got my own room for $30. It was nice, clean and had heating, unlike the backpackers. Australians often don't bother with heating. Unlike North America or Europe, they're much more likely to just put a jumper on indoors. Although it's gets very hot in the summer, Perth isn't that warm at the other times of the year. The last winter had been particularly cold with night temperatures dropping to near freezing. Whilst I was there the weather hovered around the 19-20C mark and it rained heavily practically every day.

Perth is quite a nice city. It isn't very big, except by Australian standards, with a population something over a million people. It's home to a lot of British immigrants, or "pommie bastards" as we're affectionately known. Public transport in the centre is free, though that isn't quite as generous as it sounds, because the centre isn't that big. Unless you were in a hurry, or it was raining, you could just as well walk throughout the Free Transit Zone.

Australia probably has some of the worst pubs in the world. The really bad ones are inhabited almost exclusively by men with the occasional scattering of terrifying women. They have a trough around the base of the bar, so that people sitting at the bar can just drop their litter and cigarette ash around them. The really high class establishments have "skimpy" barmaids. Skimpies are just dressed in their underwear or swimming costume. Tacky doesn't even come close to describing it.

Fortunately, not all the pubs are like that. One good one I found was called the Brass Monkey in the touristy area called Northbridge. They had a band there some nights and it was always pretty full. It had a nice, big fireplace and they actually served beer by the pint rather than the sherry glasses that beer's traditionally served in in Australia. The best beer I found in Perth was called Redback. It's a wheat beer though, unlike German style wheat beers, it's usually only found in the clear version, rather than the cloudy. It's not cheap though and starts getting very expensive outside of Perth.

Perth isn't actually on the coast. Fremantle is the port next to Perth and there are a number of good diving spots nearby. Probably the favourite one is Rottnest Island, or Rotto, as it's known to the locals. Apparently there are some quite spectacular underwater limestone formations to see as well as soft corals and sponges. I say apparently because I never got the chance to see them myself. I did book a day's diving with Barrakuda, but we got blown out because of the weather. The forecast was for 3m swells, which didn't sound much fun to me. At that time of the year, I think those conditions are quite common. The water temperature then was 18C, so I was somewhat surprised to learn that they just used 5mm wetsuits. That sort of temperature is definitely semi-dry territory as far as I'm concerned.

I did a couple of day tours from Perth. The first one was to the Pinnacles Desert to see the limestone pinnacles sticking upright through the sand. We also went into the bush and spotted lots of western grey kangaroos and emus, which was good. The weather wasn't the greatest, though it did stop raining for the Pinnacles. The sandboarding was cut very short though, because there was a howling gale and then it started to rain. Still it was a good day out, though I could have done without the 4WD breaking down. First the fan belt went and then a tyre burst, and it naturally started to rain when we all had to get out whilst the driver changed the tyre.

The other tour I did was to Wave Rock. It's a very long way, something like 700 kms. The driver had verbal diarrhoea, so I'm now fully conversant with all aspects of bush life including how to raise kangaroos and castrate sheep. I'm sure it'll come in handy one day.

After 5 days I decided it was time to move up north where the weather was a bit better. So I climbed aboard the Greyhound bus and headed for Monkey Mia. I had originally intended to try diving the Abrolhos Islands out of Geraldton but, despite several phone calls from the UK, I was unable to arrange anything. The Batavia Diving Academy does arrange trips some times, but I was the only person who wanted to go that weekend, so I couldn't go. This was going to prove to be a familiar experience. Another company called Sea Trek also dive there for a few weeks of the year. They dive in Exmouth and the Montebello Islands in the winter and move their boat south for the summer, stopping at a few places along the way. As luck would have it, they weren't due to arrive there until 3 weeks too late for me. Their number is (08) 9421 1052

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